I’m in Redmond today and tomorrow, with a couple of action-packed days of meetings on tap. The focus, of course, is Windows 7, and everything I learn will wind up in Windows 7 Inside Out, with a subset shared here.
Got any Windows 7 questions you want to ask? (Besides, you know, how much will it cost and when will it ship, which I don’t expect to find out and probably wouldn’t be able to share even if I did.)
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 
Hi Ed,
I would be interested to know the following:
how many drivers already support the win 7 logo?
how many drivers (logo or not) have already been updated for win 7?
which types of applications pose the biggest app compatibility issues?
Will there be as many drivers for the 64-bit version as for the 32-bit version?
What has been done to improve the quality of third-party drivers?
Will there be more updates of different types of drivers via windows updates for win 7 than for win xp or vista? If yes, how many more?
Dirk, I asked this question about two weeks ago and was told that the information about driver coverage will not be available until RTM or thereabouts. They want hardware makers to concentrate on getting the drivers right!
Hi Ed,
What are the ten largest areas of problems that Microsoft has discovered, based on the telemetry data they have gathered since the release of the RC version?
Are there specific makes of hardware that in general produce larger amounts of problems/crashes than other makes, based on the telemetry data gathered from the installed RC base?
Any chance to see you around B26? 😉
What’s the “finger”-around for those of us who, even on Vista, set the Start Menu to “Classic” so that we can switch to very frequently used programs via the keyboard by pressing
Windows-Key followed by
a one character unique abbreviation (shortcut/link) associated with said program
“We” don’t want to have to:
use the mouse, or
use some multiple simultaneous salute sequence like Windows+1, etc. because we can do it one handed/fingered the above/”classic” way
Ed, Please tell Microsoft to change the default UAC setting for the RTM version of Windows 7 otherwise UAC will be completely useless!
http://www.pretentiousname.com/misc/win7_uac_whitelist2.html
Had a lengthy conversation with some security experts about UAC and will write about it soon.
Hi, Ed:
I have read that the movie studios don’t want Blu-Ray on the 32-bit Windows 7 OS. They’ve asked MS to permit Blu-Ray only on 64-bit, for security reasons. Can you ask MS about this, and whether a decision has been made?
Thanks,
Bill
I just found a cool new tool in the Backup Restore Center I don’t recall seeing in Vista, the ability to burn a system repair disk. How does this compare with the repair install that we had with XP and earlier versions of Windows. Will a repair install from boot up be available in 7. How well featured is the new tool?
Thanks
Mark
Bill, Blu-ray players work great on Windows 7 x86 and there are no plans to change that.
Paul Thurrott gives a date of October 15 for Windows 7 release
I can neither confirm nor deny that date with any official source. I do hope our book is out before then.
The only thing that has been bothering me in my day to day use of Windows 7 RC is the functionality when you click on the program icon in the taskbar when its already open. In XP/Vista and for a majority of apps in Windows 7 (and IE when it only has ONE tab open), when you click the program icon on the taskbar it will minimize/maximize. Now, by default in Windows 7, when IE has two or more tabs and Windows Explorer has two or more folders open, when you click the icon on the taskbar it only opens up the preview. The only way to fix this is by changing the “Taskbar Buttons” option in the Taskbar properties, which means adding labels to the open programs. Long story short, I should be able to ALWAYS have the click to maximize/minimize without having labels for the programs.
Can we get more information on Morro, Microsoft’s free antivirus product? I would think they want to have this released along with Windows 7, but there has been no beta yet. When Windows Defender was being developed, we saw multiple betas, at the time name Microsoft AntiSpyware. Personally, I wish they would just wrap antivirus protection into Windows Defender and include it with the OS and call it a day.
Jim, I asked about this yesterday. Hope to get a reply soon but might not be able to say anything for a month or two because of NDAs even if I do get details.
Whenever my system comes out of Sleep, I lose my network connection.
If I set BIOS to S1, Windows 7 seems to work OK, but with S1 the fans continue. The more desirable S3 works with XP.
It seems odd that the older OS works with the newer Sleep Mode and the newer OS only works with the older Sleep Mode.
Is anyone at Microsoft looking at this?
Fred
Fred, what’s the system specs? Model/make, mobo, BIOS rev?
Since there will be no more Ultimate Extras, will Poker and Tinker be available in any software package from Microsoft?
Are there any plans for Media Center to support HD recordings on DishTV? Something concrete would be nice.
Hello Ed!
Windows Explorer’s “Views” settings do not stick in Vista.
In Windows 7 it would be so useful to be able to:
– view of all my data in the same “View”, all the time – regardless of file-type (images, music, video, documents)
– set Windows Explorer to remember the size of it’s window
For example, I would like to set Windows Explorer to the ‘Details’ view and re-size the window so:
– I can see all the columns I’ve activated
– it remembers the order of the columns
– it remembers the width I’ve chosen for the ‘name’ column
Could Microsoft be persuaded to include preferences that support changing the default behaviour?
Thank-you very much for your consideration!
Peter
Peter, you will definitely not see any changes in this sort of behavior in Windows 7 as released. This is a design decision and the design is locked down cold. From here on our, only showstopper bugs get fixed. Good feedback for next revision of Windows, though.
Will there be an upgrade path from RC1 to RTM, or will a reinstall be necessary?
I have a Vista x64 SP1 Preinstalled HP desktop computer.
After Win7 is released, how long should I wait before upgrading, to ensure that I don’t have driver problems?
Should I upgrade to Win7 at all? I don’t have any serious complaints about Vista.
could you ask them if they experimented on adding full aero glass in Jumplist
Hi Ed. I am currently working at a local University and I would just like to ask if it is okay to install Windows 7 RC on some of our lab computers. I have concerns about licensing and similar legalities. I would really like to do install 7 despite it being an RC release to test the compatibility of our current library of software being utilized for some of our IT-related classes. I have yet to find an official statement (online) about this from Microsoft. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you very much.